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Sunday, December 10, 2017

During January 2017 the Cederberg experienced a massive fire and destroyed much of the Wolfberg Cracks and Wolfberg Arch hiking route, which was our main hike mission for this trip. The route was then closed and all we could do was fill our days with alternate routes around the area.

The Sanddrift Camp Site early morning warm sun shines onto the visitors, while the charred mountain about prepares for it's slow recovery.

The Maltese Cross is a 4 hour route there and back and worth visiting when going to the Cederberg.

Sunday, September 24, 2017

This time of the year we head off to find some flowers. The rain has been very scarce and most extreme drought in a very long time. It has been almost 5 years since we have had an average rainfall season pattern. For this reason, we decided to find a local flower spot to enjoy the arrival of the Spring season.

Saturday, August 12, 2017

We often spend our weekends doing long distance hikes, burning off the carbon and enjoying the great out doors, but this time we decided to do some exploring that was more like a picnic in the park.

The old Groote Schuur Zoo was started by Cecil John Rhodes around 1896 and his legacy left to the state was for all to have free access to his pride and joy zoo. Unfortunately as we have become more civilised in animal welfare, zoo's have become less popular. In this case, this zoo was only financially supported by the government until 1980, accompanied by the increase in animal welfare laws, which declared this venue not fit to hold these animals, and it was closed down somewhere between 1980 and 1985.

We suggest that when you come visit, you do not come alone, as the venue is open access to anyone and can be a bit creepy inside the lions enclosures.

Apparently there were two Tahrs that escaped from this zoo onto Table Mountain. These two Himalayan mountain goats bred like wild fire and they remained on the mountain for almost a century. In 2000 a decision was taken to remove all of them, but there are still some hanging around the slopes as we have seen for ourselves, if you look carefully, you will see them too.

Around the area are lovely trees and some lovely spots to enjoy a nice picnic with a view. Stop over here and enjoy the energy that was felt by the creator himself, but do not forget that these wild animals did not ever live a happy life behind bars.

The following images were found off various sites regarding the zoo , that do not belong to us, but we thought they were important as part of the story and worth a share: